The fossil fuel lobby's campaign to confuse the public and
policy makers about climate change has made extensive use of a small number of
"greenhouse skeptics" -- scientists who are skeptical about climate
change. There are, perhaps, a dozen visible "skeptics" compared to
more than 2,000 scientists reporting to the United Nations' Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The use of this tiny group of "skeptics" became
clear in the spring of 1995 when they were forced to disclose for the first time
under oath how much funding they had received from industry sources. The
disclosures came during a utility hearing in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Prior to that hearing, Dr. Pat Michaels had acknowledged in
an e-mail correspondence that he had received about $16,000 in industry funding.
In fact, it turned out that he had received more than 10 times that amount from
industry sources -- funding he had never publicly disclosed. In addition to
funding both his publications, Western Fuels also provided a $63,000 grant for
Michaels' research. Another $49,000 came from the German Coal Mining
Association. A smaller grant of $15,000 came from the Edison Electric Institute.
Michaels also listed a grant of $40,000 from the western mining company, Cyprus
Minerals. For much of the 1990s, Cyprus Minerals was the largest single funder
of the anti-environmental Wise Use Movement in the western part of the U.S.

From 1991 to 1995, Dr. Robert Balling received about $300,000
from Cyprus Minerals, the British Coal Corporation, the German Coal Mining
Association and OPEC. In his collaborations with Dr. Sherwood Idso, Balling has
received about $50,000 in research funding from Cyprus Minerals, as well as a
separate grant of $4,900 from Kenneth Barr, at the time CEO of Cyprus. The
German Coal Mining Association has provided about $80,000 in funding for
Balling's work. The British Coal Corporation has kicked in another
$75,000. Balling also received a grant of $48,000 from the Kuwait Foundation for
the Advancement of Science as well as unspecified consulting fees from the
Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research. Balling's 1992 book, The
Heated Debate, was subsequently translated into Arabic and distributed to
the governments of OPEC. The funding for this edition of his book was provided
by the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research.

Another highly visible skeptic, S. Fred Singer,
acknowledged during a 1994 appearance on the television program Nightline
that he had received funding from Exxon, Shell, Unocal and ARCO. He did not deny
receiving funding on a number of occasions from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
Singer recent acknowledged that his institute, The Science and Environment
Policy Project (SEPP), is partially funded by Exxon.

Singer's defense is that his scientific position on
global atmospheric issues predates that funding and has not changed because of
it.

It raises an interesting
question.

What would happen if the industry-funded "greenhouse skeptics" just happened to
stumble on a clue that the warming of the planet is, indeed, intensifying -- and
that the findings of the IPCC have validity? Would they be willing
to change the direction of their research and, in the process, risk of cutting off their
industry funding? Such a situation would provide a profound conflict of interest.

Fortunately for "greenhouse skeptics" such as
Michaels, Balling and Singer the situation has apparently never arisen.